Posted
by
timothy
on Monday January 20, 2014 @06:36AM
from the lucky-numbers dept.

diegocg writes "Linux kernel 3.13 has been released. This release includes nftables (the successor of iptables); a revamp of the block layer designed for high-performance SSDs; a framework to cap power consumption in Intel RAPL devices; improved squashfs performance; AMD Radeon power management enabled by default and automatic AMD Radeon GPU switching; improved NUMA and hugepage performance; TCP Fast Open enabled by default; support for NFC payments; support for the High-Availability Seamless Redundancy protocol; new drivers; and many other small improvements. Here's the full list of changes."

nfc is a comms protocol, like bluetooth or ethernet, very timing sensitive, therefore best implemented on the kernel level. nfc is often used for payment systems, hen ce the conflation. am assuming - have no specific details.

Well, if you care to stop throwing peanuts from the gallery long enough to read about it, the patch adds driver support for interacting with a "secure element" embedded environment on the NFC hardware, from userspace, via a Netlink API. It's bascially passthrough from user space to the hardware.

"This release implements support for the Secure Element. A netlink API is available to enable, disable and discover NFC attached (embedded or UICC ones) secure elements. With some userspace help, this allows to support NFC payments, used to implement financial transactions. Only the pn544 driver currently supports this API."

In other words, the kernel now contains the necessary API so the PC can correctly talk to a NFC Secure Element which is needed to be able to make payments over NFC, in tandem with userspace tools.